


I'll Teach You No More in Cryptic Riddles

by DesertVixen



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Oresteia - Aeschylus
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Women Sticking Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6769495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/pseuds/DesertVixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra's final prophecy isn't like the others...</p>
<p> Story has references to canonical violence, including rape - however, no graphic descriptions have been included.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Teach You No More in Cryptic Riddles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



After everything that had happened, death would be a release. Even the bleakness of Hades would surely be a relief after the too-vivid tortures of her recent past. 

The siege and sack of Troy, the destruction of her family – Cassandra knew not if her mother and remaining siblings still lived, but she knew she would never see them again, as surely as she would never see Hector or small Astyanax again. Her rape at the hands of Ajax the Lesser, in the sacking of Athena’s temple, as she wept and pleaded and begged Athena herself to have mercy, to stop the violation of her temple and Cassandra’s body. The only answer had been Ajax’s punishing hands and her own choked sobs. She had heard whispers that the image of the goddess had turned away from the scene, but she could only remember the feeling of the statue under her desperate hands before she was torn away. 

As a final insult, she had been taken by the Greek war leader as his prize.

Cassandra stayed as far away from Agamemnon as she could in the confines of the chariot. If it was up to her, she would have been huddled in the corner, but her captor insisted that she stand and be seen – his prize of war, a Trojan princess. He had allowed her to clean up, had given her new robes, all so he would look better. As long as she could avoid touching him, Cassandra was satisfied. His touch made her skin crawl and she imagined that the reek of blood and death clung to his fine robes. At least he had not forced her into his bed for some days, where she had to lie underneath him while he rutted above, praying that his seed would find no root. She had become pregnant once, but to her great joy, she had lost the child.

Thanks to her cursed gift, Cassandra knew that he was riding to his death at the hands of his own wife. She had not told him, of course. There was no point. Agamemnon would think her as insane as her own people had always done. She was doomed to speak the truth about the future, but never to be believed. She had foreseen the fall of Troy, the destruction of all she loved, and had been powerless to stop it. She had tried – by the gods, she had tried! Cassandra had even attempted to set the great wooden horse on fire, knowing that it held crafty Greek warriors, but the Trojans had stopped her. 

Her family had loved her, had never been intentionally cruel when she spoke of her visions, even when she reacted violently – such as when she had flown at Helen, knowing that she was the cause of the pain that was to come – but they had never believed her. 

Moreover, she didn’t care to tell him. Cassandra didn’t care what happened to this man she hated. He was drenched in the blood and suffering of Troy, and he would be no loss. He was one member of an entire house with blood on its hands and murder in their hearts. The house of Atreus was one that hated the gods, a human slaughterhouse awash in blood, and Agamemnon was a son of that blood. Let him go to the fate he deserved, as he had sent so many people who had not deserved it.

But it was not only Agamemnon’s death at his queen’s hands that she foresaw.

It was her own.

Although Cassandra didn’t care if Agamemnon lived or died – if she lived or died – she had to try and tell the people around the chariot what was going to happen inside the palace. It was a compulsion, perhaps part of her curse, that she try convincing people even when she knew they would not believe her. There was always a spark of hope that this time would be different. If she could only have suffered her visions of horror alone, maybe it would have been better, but they had always come spilling out of her mouth. These people did not believe her either, and acted surprised that she knew the shameful history of their royal house.

So Cassandra steeled herself – she was a princess of Troy, the last princess of Troy there would ever be – and walked into the palace. This is the day, she had told them, and so it was. She would go to her death with the only thing that remained to her – dignity.

Agamemnon’s body sprawled by the great bath, a pool of blood forming about him, his fine robes turning crimson. The queen, Clytemnestra, stood over him, holding a double-edged ax that should have been too heavy for her, her own robes wet with water and splashed with Agamemnon’s blood. Cassandra knew that this was how her life would end.

Yet, it did not.

*** *** 

Clytemnestra stared at the woman who stood there pale and waiting, her dark hair hanging about her shoulders. She knew this was the Trojan princess Agamemnon had taunted her with, his more desirable prize of war. It was for wealth, for this woman and others, for the pride of conquering Troy, that he had gone to fight. It was for this that he had sacrificed their daughter, her sweet Iphigenia, so that the winds would take their ships to Troy. 

They had all proclaimed that they had gone to honor the agreement to support Menelaus, to rescue Helen, but Clytemnestra had not cared. None of those things had mattered to Clytemnestra as much as the memory of Iphigenia as a babe in arms or as a young girl who flung her arms around her mother’s neck. These memories were all she had left to comfort her. Her final memory was a haunting one of the young woman who had thought she went to be the wife of a great warrior. Instead of going to her marriage bed, she had gone to the altar as a sacrifice.

For that act, she could never forgive Agamemnon. She had tolerated the streak of cruelty that was part and parcel of the house of Atreus, had lived with it because she had no other choice. In his cousin’s absence, Aegisthus had handled the affairs of the kingdom and done well enough. But, like Clytemnestra, he had hungered and thirsted for vengeance against Agamemnon for what had been done to his family. Together, they had plotted while they administered Mycenae’s affairs – no need for the people, the land to suffer because of its ruler – together they had planned for this day. Yet it was Clytemnestra who had lured Agamemnon into a sense of safety, waiting until he let his guard down before she struck that first blow to leave Agamemnon confused, unable to fend off the next blow and the next from Aegisthus. Perhaps they would never know which of them had actually struck the killing blow.

Their plan had been to kill Cassandra, to blame the horrible murder of the king on the crazed Trojan woman he had brought home with him. The two of them would have been tragically too late to save their newly-returned king. People might whisper, people might not believe the palace’s tale, but there was truly little that they could do about it. The people would be more satisfied with a fair ruler who was there to care for them, rather than the ghost of an absent ruler who had cared for more for war than his own kingdom. She and Aegisthus would continue to serve Mycenae as best they could, and she would take action if he began to remind her too much of Agamemnon.

Yet, Clytemnestra could not bring herself to strike the woman who stood there – simply stood there, as if she were waiting for Clytemnestra to kill her. Suddenly, she did not see another woman that her husband had betrayed her with. 

Instead, she saw a mother’s daughter. She saw a young woman who was too thin, too pale, too mistreated. She saw what Iphigenia might have experienced if she had not been sacrificed by her father, if Mycenae had been invaded, besieged and destroyed – a princess, a valuable prize to be given to the best fighter, to be raped or used as he saw fit. Perhaps she had smiled when he came to her, or tried to make herself attractive so as to make the best warrior want her, but it was not the same as choosing to be with the man. 

Instead, it was making the only choice available to her. Clytemnestra knew well enough that sometimes the only choice was no choice at all. If the garbled reports of the events inside Athena’s temple were true, then she doubted very much that this woman had been a willing partner in anything.

Clytemnestra simply could not strike her down. 

She could not kill another mother’s daughter, even if that woman was no longer alive to bear the pain. She would not harm another woman as a part of this ridiculous fight, one in which women were the excuses, the prizes, the pawns. She would not play this part. 

Agamemnon – the one who had actually hurt her – was dead. Perhaps at her hand, perhaps not, but he had certainly died as a result of her planning. It was enough.

She would not kill an innocent woman.

Aegisthus came back, still wearing the blood-splashed robes he had been wearing when he struck Agamemnon down.

“Why have you not killed her?” He grated, whirling to face Clytemnestra who still held the axe.

“I cannot,” she whispered. “She is guilty of nothing except being a Trojan woman.”

“If you do not, I will.” He advanced on Cassandra, but before he could reach her, Clytemnestra swung the axe. She could not let him kill her. Her only thought was to stop him, but her swing was quite sure. Aegisthus, her partner in ruling and plotting and sometimes in bed, died with a look of surprise on his face. She had definitely swung a killing blow this time. 

The two women stared at each other, unable to move. 

“You must support me,” Clytemnestra breathed. “Let me do the talking, and agree with what I say.”

Cassandra looked into her eyes for a moment, then nodded slowly.

Clytemnestra began to scream, and after a moment, Cassandra added her screams.

*** ***

Cassandra moved about in shock, as Clytemnestra’s women tended to her physical needs – bathing her, dressing her hair, ensuring she ate – before settling her down in a chamber close to the queen’s own. She knew the women whispered, but she paid no attention.

She had not been killed.

The future she had seen had not come to pass. For once, her vision had been wrong, at least in part.

Cassandra half-expected to wake with a knife at her throat, or to be smothered in her sleep, or to be served poison in the food and drink the women kept pressing on her. She thought surely that the heart of the prophecy – her death as well as Agamemnon’s – would still come to pass, even if the details did not match.

When she did finally fall into an exhausted, fitful sleep, she dreamed of a gray-eyed woman with an owl perched on her shoulder, a woman who looked at her with pity. 

“Daughter of Troy, you have suffered enough.” She touched Cassandra’s forehead. “Do not fear your dreams any longer. They will be dreams only.”

Then the gray-eyed woman vanished, and Cassandra awoke in a bedchamber filled with the light of a rising run. 

_Athena_ , she thought in amazement, as she remembered her dream. Perhaps her pleas had been heard after all. 

But it was still weeks later before Cassandra believed the visions were truly gone. By then, she had become part of Clytemnestra’s household, acting as a companion to the queen.

*** *** 

There would always be those who questioned the story put about by the palace, that Aegisthus had gone crazy when Agamemnon returned, that he had killed the king out of a desire to retain his power. They had little power to contradict the queen when she said she had found Agamemnon lying there dead, and Aegisthus about to kill Cassandra. No one questioned things too loudly. Clytemnestra made clear that she would act for Orestes until he grew to manhood, and that she would heed the advice of the nobles. 

There was some discontent about the Trojan woman the queen kept close, but as long as she only whispered good things in Clytemnestra’s ears, they could do nothing. As good harvests came in and the people prospered, even that discontent melted away. 

And peace reigned in Mycenae, the rest of their days.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it!
> 
> I tried to live up to this line from your letter: _Screw the patriarchy, twist things around, and tip the scales in the women's favor._
> 
> I did mix and match a little on some of the mythological sources, but I think it all works well together. I fear I did not get too much into Cassandra as a royal advisor, but I hope you enjoyed her escaping her sad fate.
> 
> The title, of course, is a quotation from Cassandra in _Agamemnon_ , referring to the fact that it is her last prophecy because she will be killed - but I think it works nicely here. A few of Cassandra's descriptions are also drawn from her speeches in _Agamemnon_ to the chorus.
> 
> Thank you for your prompt and the wonderful chance to write for you.


End file.
